Due to increasing attention to the negative health effects of obesity in the United States and around the world, market demand for food and beverage products having alternative nutritional characteristics, including, for example, reduced or zero calorie content, has increased as well. There is market demand to replace the high-calorie sweeteners typically used in food and beverage products, such as sucrose and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), with non-nutritive sweeteners. For example, diet cola beverages have been suggested which are sweetened with potent non-nutritive sweeteners such as steviol glycosides (stevioside, rebaudioside A, etc.).
Steviol glycosides are sweet-tasting compounds extracted from the stevia plant (Stevia rebaudiana Berton). Typically, these compounds are found to include stevioside (4-13% dry weight), steviolbioside (trace), the rebaudiosides, including rebaudioside A (1-6%), rebaudioside B (trace), rebaudioside C (1-2%), rebaudioside D (trace), and rebaudioside E (trace), and dulcoside A (0.4-0.7%). Many steviol glycosides are potent, non-nutritive sweeteners. Steviol glycosides comprise a diterpene core (formula I) substituted at R1 and R2 with various combinations of hydrogen, glucose, rhamnose, and xylose.

For example, R1 may be 1-β-D-glucopyranosyl or 2-(1-β-D-glucopyranosyl)-1-β-D-glucopyranosyl, and R2 may be hydrogen, 1-β-D-glucopyranosyl, 2-(1-β-D-glucopyranosyl)-1-β-D-glucopyranosyl, 2,3-bis(1-β-D-glucopyranosyl)-1-β-D-glucopyranosyl, 2-(1-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl)-1-β-D-glucopyranosyl, 2-(1-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl)-3-(1-β-D-glucopyranosyl)-1-β-D-glucopyranosyl, or 2-(1-β-D-xylopyranosyl)-3-(1-β-D-glucopyranosyl)-1-β-D-glucopyranosyl. Rebaudioside A (wherein R1=1-β-D-glucopyranosyl and R2=2,3-bis(1-β-D-glucopyranosyl)-1-β-D-glucopyranosyl) has a sweetness of about 200 to 300 times the sweetness of sucrose. The food industry has become interested in steviol glycosides in the pursuit of alternative sweeteners. However, the straight replacement of nutritive sweeteners with known potent non-nutritive sweeteners encounters problems of off-tastes, for example slow on-set, or bitter, licorice, or lingering aftertaste. These off-tastes also arise when steviol glycosides are used as non-nutritive sweeteners in food and beverage products. Thus, there is a need for additional alternative non-nutritive sweeteners.
It is therefore an object of at least certain embodiments of the present invention to provide compounds that are useful as sweeteners. It is an object of at least certain embodiments of the invention to provide beverage products or food products having alternative nutritional characteristics and taste properties. These and other objects, features and advantages of the invention or of certain embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the following disclosure and description of exemplary embodiments.